


Party Gone Wrong

by controlledDestiny



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: "Modern Girl in Thedas" things that nobody asked for, I apologize again, Modern Girl in Thedas, SO, almost word-for-word the same as the first bit of the game, and i apologize, but it happened, i didn't wanna do it like that, oh and it's one of those:, there's guna be sass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 07:17:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/controlledDestiny/pseuds/controlledDestiny
Summary: (AKA: Act 1 of this series)A night out with some friends goes to Hell real fucking fast...





	1. Blackouts, Magic, and Demons

**Author's Note:**

> This started with a dream I had. Just like 90% of my fics do. 
> 
> And I know the whole 'modern girl gets dropped into a fandom' thing is kinda frowned upon in the fanfiction community, but I had to get this shit out of my notes app and onto the web.
> 
> Please be nice...

You wake up only because of an electric shock. It starts in your hand, then travels in waves up your arm. You wake with a gasp, witting on your knees with your hands bound in front of you. You don't get much time to yourself after that, because a very angry looking woman comes in with another in a hood, walks up behind you, and starts talking.

"Tell me why we shouldn't kill you now." she says right next to your ear. Her accent is hard for you to place. "The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead." She slowly walks around to face you, looks down at you and pointedly says, "Except for you."

You want to say  _what's a 'Conclave'?_

You also want to say  _what the fuck are you talking about?_

What actually comes out of your mouth after a moment of silence is very different.

In a disbelieving tone you ask, "You think  _I'm_  responsible?"

She doesn't answer that. Instead she demands that you  _Explain this!_  as she grabs your shackled wrists, and holds them up for you to see. Something on your left hand glows a sickly green, pulses, and sends a jolt of pain up your arm to your shoulder.

And, like, you totally doubt this, but you've gotta wonder:

Did you stumble through some kind of door between dimensions and this is somewhere far, _far_ away from home?

_Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore..._

Under different circumstances that might have made you laugh, or maybe just snort, but you don't think it's even a little funny and that's...

That's concerning.

"I... can't."

Because you really,  _really_  can't.

"What do you mean,  _you can't_?"

"I don't know what that is, or how it got there."

"You're lying!"

She cranks her hand back like she's about to whack you good and hard. But before she can, the other woman steps forward and stops her with a calm, "We need her, Cassandra."

You're leaning away from the grumpy one ( _Cassandra_ , apparently), your eyes twisted shut and jaw clenched in case she decides to land the punch anyway. The angle your body is at is uncomfortable, your spine and sides twinge at the weird position.

She doesn't hit you, surprisingly.

"I don't understand..." you whisper to yourself.

The other woman, the one with the hood, asks you if you remember anything. How it started, what happened in general.

You scrunch your face up, nose crinkling, and squint at nothing in particular as you think it over.

_You'd been out with a couple good friends, celebrating your own birthday by getting hammered on cheap beer while you sang shitty karaoke songs for a bar full of people just as smashed a you. Too smashed to care how bad you sounded or if you screwed up the lyrics. You'd decided to walk home, alone, which you now realize was really fucking stupid, and noticed someone running in the distance._

_You'd chased after them, gotten close enough to see it was a woman, tried to help her when you saw she was originally being chased by some creepy dude. But then..._

_It gets kinda dark after that._

_After that you woke up in a nightmare world. It was quiet for a second but then you heard chittering, turned around, and saw a herd giant spiders (why did it have to be fucking **spiders**?!) that were  **screeching** as they scuttled after you._

_You started climbing something, saw a glowing figure at the top of it. The vaguely feminine silhouette of light reached out towards you when you neared the peak-_

_Then it gets dark again._

"I remember running. Things were chasing me. And then... a woman?"

"A woman?" She sounds just as surprised as you did.

"She reached out to me, but then..."

Cassandra cuts in, then. All stern expression and angry full-body tension.

"Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I will take her to the rift."

Leliana leaves.

You turn to Cassandra, "What  _did_  happen?"

"It will be easier to show you." She says. "But first, you should change. You are not dressed for the weather here."

You're in a white tank top and your worn out jeans with holes in the knees. You had a hoodie last night, you know that much, so where the fuck is it now? Did they take it off you?

Well, who really gives a shit now, right?

She hauls you up off your knees, replaces the shackles with tightly wound rope, and leads you to the upper level. Doesn't take her eyes off you when they find you something that fits and tells you to change after untying the ropes. You have to strip for your new warden, which might be hot if she wasn't currently  _glaring_  at you.

You rush through the changing process, only asking for help a few times when you realize you have no clue how to put on half the shit they've laid out for you. It's a lot of green fabric and leather, the leather bits being the parts you can't figure out on your own.

When you're finished Cassandra binds your hands again and pulls you along to the biggest castle-looking door you've ever seen in person.

The sudden burst of light through the open door hurts your eyes after so long in a dank, dark dungeon. The second your eyes have adjusted you look up at the sky, finding a large swirling vortex of green storming in the sky with a cone leading down to earth like an unmoving but still swirling tornado. Sometimes it crackles with matching lightning, sometimes it just booms with crazy-loud thunder. It's pulses out flowing green light across the sky every few minutes. They're bright enough to rival the Northern Lights, in your opinion.

"We call it 'The Breach'. It's a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour. It's not the only such rift, just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave."

Your eyes widen. You turn to look at her. "An explosion can do that?"

"This one did. Unless we act, The Breach may grow until it swallows the world."

That pulsing pain suddenly hits you again, this time hard enough to make your knees weak. You collapse to the snowy dirt with a strangled groan.

"Each time The Breach expands, your mark spreads... And it is killing you." your heart skips a little when she says that. Killing you? Seriously?! "It may be the key to stopping this but there isn't much time."

You're suddenly really fucking angry. A bubble of rage from somewhere deep down, only brought up by the pain and frustration of your current situation.

"You still think I did this? To myself?!"

"Not intentionally.  _Something_  clearly went wrong."

Not something  _you_  planned, though. But it's not like she'll believe you if you say that. She's obviously a very stubborn person.

"And if I'm not responsible?"

"Someone is, and you're our only suspect. You wish to prove your innocence? This is the only way."

Great.

Just...

Fucking  _great_.

You sigh.

"I understand."

Cassandra looks shocked. Her jaws hangs open a little, her eyes widen a fraction. "Then...?"

"I'll do what I can." You tell her. "Whatever it takes."

She waxes poetic for a few seconds about  _blame_  and  _staying calm during hard times_ , then pulls out a dagger and tells you there will be a trial.

"I can promise no more."

She cuts through the ropes and helps you to your feet.

"Come, it's not far."

"Where are you taking me?"

She doesn't give you an exact answer. She just says, "Your mark must be tested on something smaller than The Breach."

Your only thought then is  _I'm probably guna die today..._

Cassandra leads you down a path to a large gate at the end of a bridge. Wounded and dead are everywhere along the way. You think you even spot one person rocking themselves, catatonic from shock. Its pretty gruesome, but for some reason you handle it really well.

The gate opens and Cassandra leads you up another path. People in armor are running the opposite way, back towards the gate. Wagons are on fire and one guy screams "Maker, it's the end of the world!" as he rushes by you.

_'Maker'? Isn't that what Sophie says in the same way you say 'God' when you're frustrated or surprised?_

You push that thought to the back of your head for the time being and keep running.

The pain in your hand flairs up again. With that pain the light grows and then dims, as a tremor rolls under you. It shakes the ground so violently that you lose balance, falling flat on your ass. When the shaking stops Cassandra is there to help you up.

"The pulses are coming faster now. The larger The Breach grows, the more rifts appear, the more demons we face."

Fucking  _what now?_

_Demons?!_

Instead of having a Demon freak-out you ask, "How  _did_  I survive the blast?"

"They said you...  _stepped_  out of a rift, then fell unconscious. They say a woman was in the rift behind you. No one knows who she was. Everything farther in the valley was laid to waste, including the Temple of Sacred Ashes. I suppose you'll see soon enough."

You're maybe ten feet away from a small bridge, one that leads over a frozen pond. Cassandra runs for it, gets to center of it, and you're only a couple inches behind her when a fucking  _meteor_ strike it, right in front of you. The two of you tumble onto the ice with a load of rubble, and come face-to-face with two spooky-ass inky ghost things that you guess must be a couple of those demons Cassandra talked about before.

She goes right for it with a shout to stay behind her. Sword in one hand and a shield on her other, she lets out a war cry as she charges at it.

Behind you is a box of weapons. Bow and arrow, twin daggers, a sword, a shield, a giant war hammer, a fancy-ish staff. You grab the glorified walking stick, ready to whack something if it gets to close. There's a big decoration on the top, heavy-looking and probably good for bashing in skulls. Plus, it'll probably help with any climbing you have to do in this snow.

When one of the demons comes for you, slinking along like it's bottom half is all slug or snake, you lash out at it with the bauble on your new walking stick. You expect the sound of metal or wood hitting some kind of flesh, but hear nothing. What you  _do_  hear is a whoosh, and what you feel is cold and vibrations. You look up to see the demon with a sheen of frost on it's chest and the top of your stick glowing bright blue.

Fuck. So you're magic, then? How the fuck did that happen?!

When the fuckers are dead and gone, having sunk into the ice and left nothing behind, Cassandra comes over with her sword raised and demands you drop your weapon.

"Okay, okay. Jeez..." You slowly bend down to place the staff on the ground, but stop when Cassandra speaks again.

"Wait." She pauses to sheath her sword, then looks up at you and says, "I cannot protect you, and I cannot expect you to be defenseless. I should remember that you agreed to come willingly."

You want to snap at her, maybe snark back with something like  _yeah_ _you fuckin' should._ But you wont do that, because you don't want the scary lady with a sword and combat training against  _Demons_ to think you're a bitch when you don't have a single fucking idea on how to handle your new magic powers.

You follow her out of the frozen pond, running through snow and more frozen bodies of water and more Demons (this time they come in black  _and_  green), until you come to a group of people on top of a hill, fighting off even more of those freaky fucking spirit things.

Cassandra gets you to jump in with her and help finish the job.

It goes by quickly now that you two are there. The Demons die quick, but there's a little vortex thingy swirling in mid-air beside a dude who's maybe four feet tall and a bald guy with a butt-chin and elf ears. An Elf and a Dwarf, standing near a magic green portal to what you assume is Hell. It kind of reminds you of the portals in that cartoon everyone is so up their own asses about lately.

The Elf yells, "Quickly, before more come through!"

Then, suddenly, he grabs your glowy hand and forces it above your head. Holds it up like he wants you to high-five the portal, and it makes your hand pulse with heavy-pressured pain. It's manageable, but still sort of intense. After a minute of him awkwardly holding up your hand the portal  _bloops_  out of existence, and he lets you go.

You want to yell at him about  _personal space_  and  _boundaries_ , but instead you rub at the wrist he just had in a death-grip and mumble, "What'd you do?"

" _I_  did nothing." He answers, a very slight British lilt to his voice. "The credit is yours."

You look down at your hand as the light sparks once, twice, dims, then you shrug.

"At least it's good for  _something_."

You tune out whatever Egg Head says next, because you honestly have no clue what he's even talking about so why bother listening. Instead you stare at your glowing hand, flexing your fingers and watching the lightly spark up again. You're completely spaced out until he speaks directly to you.

"It seems you hold the key to our salvation." He tells you with a small smile.

"Good to know! And here I thought we'd be ass-deep in Demons forever!" The Dwarf says, big smile on his face as he take a couple steps towards you. "Varric Tethras: rogue, storyteller, and occasionally unwelcome tag-along."

He sends a wink to Cassandra. She makes a disgusted noise, curling her lip in a tiny snarl, and looks away from him.

With a name like Varric, maybe your own name won't seem so strange to these people. You know it got you some weird looks back home from people who'd never heard it before and others who thought it was a little too old school for 2018.

"Minerva." You reply, adding a sarcastic curtsy/bow thing at the end with a smile of your own.

"My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see you still live."

Varric cuts in with, "He means 'I kept that mark from killing you while you slept'."

"Uh, thanks. Like, a lot." You oh-so eloquently say.

"Thank me if we manage to close the Breach without killing you in the process."

"Oh, yeah. Thanks for the vote of fuckin' confidence, asshole." You mumble as he turns to converse with Cassandra.

You and Varric wander off to do whatever. And though the idea would normally leave you feeling somewhat gross, you still loot any dead body you find in the area. On one dead guy there's a staff that shoots fire instead of ice, and you take that because you'd rather have something that burns shit out here in the cold than something that freezes shit. Maybe it'll keep you a little warmer as you travel.

 


	2. Dalish?

Solas asks, "You are Dalish, but clearly away from the rest of your clan. Did they send you here?" as the four of you run about the frozen mountains.

It confuses you, the  _Dalish_  remark, and the mention of a  _clan_. You have no family, and even if you did they wouldn't be  _here_. And what the Hell does  _Dalish_  mean? Is it an insult?

"Dalish?" You ask.

"You... have Dalish markings." He sounds confused now too. "Are you not?"

"Markings?"

You check the limbs you can see easily, then feel across your face for some kind of brand or raised lines that could be markings, but find nothing. Varric, of course, has a pocket mirror. You assume it's either to comb the hair on his head or the patch on his chest you can see spilling out of his half-open shirt. Either way, he has one, and he hands it to you so you can see yourself.

"Mother _fucker_..."

There are faded dark purple lines running over your forehead and down your cheeks. A lines pass over both sides of your face and end near your jawline in a point, branching off at your temples and leading to the outer corner of both your eyes. Eyes that are rimmed in charcoal, smudged in such an 80's rocker way that you kind of want to laugh at yourself. The bottom half of your face is less detailed. A simple line of that faded purple runs through your bottom lip, over your chin, and halfway down your throat with a few small symmetrical branches on either side of it.

"Who drew on my fuckin' face?" you question, rubbing at the lines with four of your fingers. "I swear, I wasn't  _that_  drunk." The lines refuse to even smudge, so you assume it's purple Sharpie and give up with a sigh. "Well, at least it's not a buncha dick doodles."

Varric barks out a laugh. Solas and Cassandra look at you like you've grown a second head.

"What?" You ask.

"Good one, kid. I think you might've broken our Seeker and the Apostate."

You look back into the mirror and check the lines over again, noticing that maybe, just maybe, they're actually _tattoos_. Not Sharpie lines. You have a _tattoo_ , you know what faded tattoo ink looks like on your own skin. You're about to turn away and hand the mirror back to Varric when you catch something weird in your reflection. Your glowing hand holds the mirror while your other hand comes up to touch what you think you see and-

Yep.

Yep yep  _yep_.

You have pointy ears. Just like Solas. They stick out to the sides a little more than his, but they're there and real and-

Holy shit...

"I'm an Elf?" You whisper.

You hope nobody heard you. Varric was probably the only one who possibly could, seeing as Cassandra and Solas have stepped off to the side to talk in hushed voices. Probably about you. About your possible amnesia. You've already forgotten quite a bit, apparently, so it's not all that weird for you to forget you're an Elf.

Right?

"You alright, kid?"

"Yeah." You hand the mirror back to Varric, straighten out your jacket, and grab your staff to use as a walking stick when the two responsible adults are done talk among themselves. "Yeah. I'm okay. Thanks."

You've decided to ignore your new appearance until the danger has passed and you have ample time to lose your proverbial shit.

The Breach sends out another wave of light and sound. Your hand flares up and you stumble with a pained shout. Solas says something about the mark _consuming you_ and that his magic _can't keep it from growing_.

Awesome.

Thanks, asshole.

That makes you feel  _sooo_  much better about this shit show.

 


	3. Nightmare Fuel

"So...  _are_  you innocent?"

"I don't remember what happened. But then again, I usually wake up in handcuffs after a night of partying,  _soooooo_..." You shrug lazily as you run up the stairs jammed into the side of a cliff. "I at least _hope_ I'm innocent." You hope everyone will laugh at that, but again, only Varric finds it even remotely funny. "I know for a fact I would never commit mass murder while drunk off my ass, so there's  _that_."

"Should have spun a story, kid." Varric tells you. "Or, at least, a  _better_  story."

"That's what  _you_  would have done." Cassandra sneers.

_Damn, lady. Chill it with the hate on the funny Dwarf. Jeez..._

"It's more believable, and less prone to result in premature execution."

"Oh, right. I forgot y'all were guna kill me over something I had no active part in. Hopefully I don't get mauled to death by one of the slinking nightmare fuel fucks out there and we can continue with Plan A."

You get a disgusted noise from Cassandra. Solas stays silent.

Varric chuckles. "Nightmare fuel? That's a good one. Think I'll put that in my next book."

"As long as you credit me, go right ahead."

 


	4. "Closing rifts and saving soldiers. It's what I do."

Coming up to another bridge you find Leliana having some sort of argument through gritted teeth with a very loud old dude in a fancy white and red get-up. He's ranting and raving about shit they need to do and  _you,_ and Leliana is trying to calm him down but he just won't chill the fuck out.

_What an ass..._

When you get close enough he orders Cassandra to restrain you and get you ready to be sent off to someplace called Val Roy-Oh, whatever that is. It sounds vaguely French, which is probably good because you have enough mandatory elementary/middle school French classes on your side to be able to at least get the basics out. Stuff like  _hi_  and  _my name is_  and  _why are you tying that noose around my neck?_

Okay, maybe not that last one.

Cassandra is just fucking  _appalled_ at being ordered around by the guy and she makes sure he knows it.

Arguing starts again. This round ends with-

"Justinia is dead! We must elect her replacement, and obey  _her_  orders on the matter!"

"Isn't closing the Jolly Green Giant  _H_ _ole in the Sky_  more important than electing a new Lady-Pope?" You snark.

" _You_  brought this on us in the first place!" He snaps back.

Okay,  _fuck_  this guy. He can get chomped on by a horde of demons for all you care.

You sit back behind Cassandra and Leliana, waiting patiently between Elfy EggMan and Sassy McHairyChest, as they argue your case with the old asshole. You've spaced out on The Breach now, watching as it swirls and pulses and shoots lightning. It's kinda hypnotizing if you pay attention long enough.

Then they're turning to you, asking you something, demanding you make a decision about-

Your hand crackles and flickers, which means The Breach is expanding again.

Shit...

"What?" You ask, almost whisper, completely lost now.

Varric, ever the helpful one, says, "They wanna know which path you think we should take."

"Wha-  _Me_? Why me?! I have no idea!"

"If we charge with the soldiers we'll get there faster." Cassandra offers.

"Faster, but not safely. We can use our forces as a distraction and take the mountain path."

"We lost contact with an entire squad on that path. It's too risky."

"The soldiers have more fighting experience, right? They can handle themselves?" You ask. Cassandra stares for a second and then nods once. "Okay. So we take the mountain path. We can stay safe and check to see if that squad you mentioned is still alive."

Leliana gives you a little smirk. Just a small quirk of her lips that's gone almost too quickly to seem real. Varric's doesn't disappear, though. His smile turns into a full on grin. Solas is still passive, as usual.

Cassandra barks out orders, and as the five of you leave Rodrick bites out something that obviously sets her on edge. You want to say something to ease her clenched jaw, but you know you aren't close enough yet to have any god effects on the prickly woman.

On your way up the mountain path you end up saving some of that squad that stopped checking in from a rift and some demons. One of the soldiers even thanks you, despite knowing you're the one everyone says opened the tear in the sky.

You give her a sarcastic two-fingered salute and a not-so-sarcastic smile. "Closing rifts and saving soldiers. It's what I do."

She thanks you again. Gives you her  _sincerest_   _gratitude_. It's real fucking weird after being accused of shit all day.

After that comes the big-ass rift. One that spits out a huge thing apparently called an Envy Demon. You're sure you (figuratively) shit your pants when the fucker roars and whips lightning at everyone. He calls out some more of the spirit-y demons too, which makes the job of killing it just a little harder.

Then comes the fun part.

When the demon is dead and the rift is clear of enemies you have to close it, obviously. So you hold up your hand like you have twice now, imagine the rift closing, send all those thoughts out towards the vortex and-

Holy shit  _that hurts!_

It's like closing twenty of the smaller rifts all at once, and the act drains you so bad that you feel dead on your feet once the job is done. Everyone cries out, fists raised, cheering like crazy.

Everything suddenly starts spinning.

They're all still cheering when you faint.

**Author's Note:**

> Uh...
> 
> Thanks for reading?


End file.
